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A Voyage Long and Strange
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tony Horwitz’s book “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War” looked at ways in which the Civil War lives on, from re-enactors to controversies over a Lincoln statue. He took a year traveling to various shrines and battlefields, and the book was as much his own sometimes bizarre journey as it was a work of proper sociology.
Now Horwitz has written a new book, “A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World,” which covers American history from 1492 to the pilgrims, the period that even some of us history buffs are a little spotty on. That was Horwitz’s own realization one day as he stood at Plymouth Rock.
Horwitz being Horwitz, of course, this isn’t a textbook. He goes on his own pilgrimage, all around North America, visiting the sites where stuff happened, and filtering it through his idiosyncratic lens.
Here’s what our reviewer, Emory professor Michael A. Elliott, had to say Sunday in his review:
“It is in his description of how our contemporaries experience history that Horwitz really shines. He does more than serve up a cast of colorful characters. He depicts an overlooked paradox of American life: Even though surveys repeatedly show that most of us know little about our shared past, there remains a large, diverse assemblage of Americans for whom history remains very much alive. It is hard to read “A Voyage Long and Strange” without catching a little of their passion for the past.”
Horwitz will give a lecture and sign books at the Margaret Mitchell House at 7 tonight.
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